IP Wireless ready to ‘go anywhere’ with new software release

IP wireless has added Universal Subscriber Identity Module [USIM] authentication; mobile IP and Windows XP support; and new reporting and network management tools to its Go Anywhere Broadband suite of broadband wireless products.

The new software enhances the company’s vision of seamless mobile roaming between wireless cells, Jon Hambidge, IP Wireless’ senior marketing director.

“Right now our platform is seamless between sectors of a single cell, but if you have to go beyond cell sites, you have to log on,” Hambidge said. “This feature--mobile IP--will allow you to keep your IP address at high-speed going between those cell sites.”

The new software also lets users roam between technologies.

“Being on 802.11 and picking up your laptop to go somewhere and you never get disconnected, it keeps the connection and takes you into the wide area,” Hambidge said.

SIM Authentication takes technology used in mobile wireless’ GSM networks and moves it into the broadband space, putting user preferences and information on a chip that can follow the user to different devices and different networks in either mobile or broadband wireless’ sectors.

“The same chip that goes into a GSM phone goes into our modems,” Hambidge said.

Such portability is a requirement for European operators who are moving into the broadband wireless space, he said.

“It’s the way they handle their back office authentication so they can leverage all the SIM infrastructure for GSM and also handle the authentication on their broadband product,” Hambidge said. “The idea of global roaming is starting to percolate in these guys’ minds as more people are starting to deploy it.”

IPWireless is a finalist in Sprint’s next-generation fixed broadband wireless tests and Hambidge suggested that the ability to move between Sprint’s PCS and multipoint multichannel distribution service [MMDS] broadband spectrum could be a differentiator.

“I think there are a lot of serious implications for it all coming together,” he said. “It just makes much more sense to put it on the more robust, higher capacity network.”